Washington chooses QB, won’t name him till opener vs. Boise State

The Washington football team has selected its starting quarterback for Friday’s opener at Boise State but coach Chris Petersen won’t announce him until game day.

The Huskies have a three-way battle between junior Jeff Lindquist, redshirt freshman K.J. Carta-Samuels and true freshman Jake Browning. They were listed as co-starters on the depth chart released Sunday.

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In 2004, when he was the Boise State offensive coordinator, the Broncos didn’t name Jared Zabransky the starter until he trotted out to take the first snap against Idaho. He had battled with Mike Sanford for the starting job.

But every time as head coach, Petersen identified Boise State’s starter and had him speak to the media before the team’s game-week preparations.

“We just think at this point it’s kind of the best for our program to move forward for these handful of days with less distractions — we think it will create a little less distractions,” Petersen said. “And then after that game, hey, we talk about it. I’m sure we’ll be talking about it all season long.”

Petersen said if he knew the starter earlier, he would have announced it. He said the Huskies could play multiple quarterbacks.

“We have a really good plan,” he said. “We’re excited about it. ... We’ll just show up to the game and go with our plan. But we do feel good about our plan and we’ll go from there.”

Boise State players and coaches said Sunday that not knowing the quarterback is a complication but they didn’t consider it a major issue.

“To me, you look at everybody else,” defensive coordinator Marcel Yates said. “I’m looking at the running back, the O-line, all the receivers. The thing that a lot of people don’t see is they’re very good at tight end.

“.. They’re just making it tough on me to figure out who the ‘or’ is. We’ll see on game day who it is.”

The Huskies have 11 true freshmen on their depth chart. Petersen told me in April this team would be “young — really young.”

About Bronco Beat

Dave Southorn joined the Idaho Statesman staff in 2013 and has covered Boise State athletics since 2005. A 2004 University of Colorado graduate, he focuses on the Broncos' basketball and football teams.